Lead me from unreal to real; lead me from darkness to light; lead me from death to immortality. — Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

Use Social Media like you Use Electricity and Fire

I came across the following quote on social media and when I shared the quote with my friends, it created a hue and cry:

THE GREAT THING about social media was how it gave a voice to voiceless people. But we’re now creating a surveillance society, where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless.

JON RONSON, author of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, in a TED talk

A friend who is an all-rounder and a very sincere person has written the following:

We cannot completely do away with the social media. Just like any modern technology, social media too have their own advantages and disadvantages.

The primary advantages of social media being easy and instant communication, best means for connecting with friends, fun and enjoyment, real time news and updates and very good and cost effective source for the business people to improve their customer base and sales.

The major disadvantages of social media being health problems and family problems arising due to unsatiable addiction to social media, fast communication of misinformation, false news and communally, socially and religiously sensitive news leading to undesirable and despicable consequences and privacy issues.

Whether the disadvantages of social media outweigh their advantages is, no doubt, a moot question.

Practically speaking, we have to strike a rightful balance between the two. We have to be rational in using the social media and make optimum utilisation of the advantages and try our best to minimise the disadvantages by reducing the time spent by us on social media, sharing only those messages which are likely to improve the knowledge, wisdom, values, promoting spiritual and religious harmony etc. and ensure that misinformation, false news and socially/religiously provocative news are not shared in the social media.

– Shri VG Krishnan, Finance Professional

I feel that his views are very valuable and must be kept in every user’s mind.

I give below what I feel on the subject:

If we resolve to do certain things in a resolute manner, social media like any product of technology can become a boon. All problems crop up when self-discipline is missing in our own lives.

We should use social media to communicate. But what one communicates depends on his or her mental makeup, value system and character.

We should use social media only to learn something or to enrich our knowledge. Here again, what we want to learn depends on the user, again his or her mental makeup, value system and character.

We should use social media to promote ourselves, but the subject of promotion always depends on the three important things stated in the above 2 points.

The topic one shares, the picture or video one shares, the likes for a post, the dislikes for a post, always indicates the above three points of fact about the user.

Social media companies including Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Whatsapp, Telegram, Instagram all despite their protestations, do collect the number of likes, dislikes, arguments for, arguments against a particular product, man, or idea and supply the data analytics to political outfits, terror organizations, religious fanatics, and mafias so that the latter can properly strategize their next action in the society.

Even without a mind to try to know such things, the utter foolishness, especially of our female youth, in freely recording their personal pictures in tightfitting clothes, close family photos, date of birth, address, phone numbers,email IDs, places of visit, food they eat, their likes and dislikes, so very often in Instagram and Facebook, is a sure sign of inviting dangers in their personal lives.

Always keeping the GPS location on lets the criminals to watch the movements of us, the Google telling us where we have been last week, last month and last year to indicate how much near or far we are located from the intending intruder.

If we can use the social media with self-discipline like we we do when we use electricity and fire, then only social media is a boon.

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Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life; think of it; dream of it; live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success…